Sallow
by Slipstream
Summary: An AU set after the events of Weathertop… What if Aragon and the hobbits had arrived at Rivendell those precious few hours too late? The effects of the shard on Frodo are seen fully. (Rating for dark themes and general evil...)


Title: Sallow (1/1)  
Author: Slipstream  
Rating: PG-13 (weirdness, confusion, and dark themes, *really* dark themes)  
Main Characters: Frodo  
Category Warning Type Stuff: AU, Angst, Death-Fic, my usual cheery stuff :)  
Summary: An AU set after the events of Weathertop… What if Aragon and the hobbits had arrived at Rivendell those precious few hours too late? The effects of the shard are seen fully.  
Disclaimer: /Tolkien loves me, this I know…/  
/For dear Frodo tells me so…/  
/All hobbits to him belong…/  
/They aren't mine though how I long…/  
/Yes, Tolkien loves me….!/  
  
******************************************************************************  
  
"Sallow"  
by Slipstream  
  
  
…  
  
Oh…   
  
Oh it *hurt*!  
  
His arm, his arm… It felt as if it might rip itself from its socket. The shoulder felt as if the skin were rotting and sloughing off, revealing the white and red bone underneath to the slashing of a thousand poisoned knives. Pricking and poking and cutting and…  
  
STABBING AND DRIVING AND BURNING AND SCREAMING AND DIEING AND…  
  
The flash of panic left his eyes and he drew a deep ragged breath that rattled in his throat and made his lungs gurgle. That… that was…  
  
A king in silver and white and gray, his long beard blurring into a cloud about him. Tall, infinitely tall, only the king's long, jagged sword of ebony and marble seemed to touch the ground where he lay. Eyes of silver, teeth and mouth of black.  
  
…  
  
Wherever he was now was foul smelling, the scents of a thousand white perfumes invading his head and choking off his brain. And bright. A thick yellow light that rolled and filled and brought pain to his eyes. It came from one focal point in this place, and he reached toward the hot white burning to feel from which it came.  
  
A candle. The single flicker burned and danced.  
  
He put it out. The flame would wound him no more.  
  
In the penetrating comfort of darkness he groped around his prison. Beneath him gave and shifted with his every move, and something thin and wide futilely tried to keep him down. He slid along beneath it and fell, the thump of his heavy bones reverberating through his thin body.  
  
His arm… his arm…  
  
There was no softness here, on the floor. Good. Good. He shut his lids and curled his lips around teeth in relief. Eyes closed, he saw everything. Eyes open, he saw more. Every grain of the wood, every mote of dust, the air currents as they swirled and sucked from underneath the bed. Bed… bed? Something faint rose forward into his consciousness. Had he fallen out of bed? Where in the wilderness had he found a bed? Certainly not on the…  
  
ROCKS PALE ICY ROCKS JUTTING CUTTING SHARP PAIN…  
  
More gurgling. He moved his mouth noiselessly against the wood, wanting to scream but only achieving something akin to a crow drowning far, far away in the back of his throat.   
  
He waited. When it seemed that he could move again without his eyeballs being slammed to the back of his brain, he pushed up with his one hand. How thin it was! The bones were finer, like a birds, but thick and heavy, jutting out from white skin pulled taunt across his frame. The nails of his hand were clean and long. They curved, white and purple, to scuttle against the wood. His left hand, the useless one that dragged along the floor, would have been identical to its mate if it hadn't been for the sallow skin laced with black veins.  
  
The patterns they created were interesting, but investigating further would have to wait. Yes, wait. This room was bad, not the place he needed to be, and bad people would come soon and attempt to take his new body from him. The veins in his arm told him this was not what they wanted with a voice that seemed to come from something heavy next to the great rotting wound in his shoulder.  
  
Investigating this could wait, too. He had to get out.  
  
In the absence of the yellow flame-light he could see the glittering of the star-eyes through the hole in the wall. But where was the Eye, the biggest EYE of all…?  
  
He crawled to the window and clawed for purchase as he stood on his unsteady, waxen hobbit-feet, closing his eyes so that he could see into the darkness better. Yes… there it was. The forests surrounding the cliff city were gray fog, the magnificent walls a blur, the river below another shadow, but the night sky was lit with a thousand golden torch lights. Orc eyes riding dark birds. The scouts circled the country side, making lines of after glow in the sky like a procession of ants, all leading back to the great hill, the greater glow in the distance visible only to dark and silver eyes such as his.  
  
A giant arrow pointing towards Mt. Doom and the Eye.  
  
His arm-veins whispered to him again and he obeyed. The ledge was high, high for a hobbit, but he found no trouble in digging his one clawed hand into the walls and pulling himself up to crouch on the sill…  
  
He paused.  
  
Like the beatings of a heart that he had felt so very long ago, he could feel the rhythmic tread of footsteps on boards, coming closer. One person… two? In his moment of confusion he was caught by the ray of red torchlight that streamed in through the slowly opening door, outlining a figure with a golden brown mop of hair who stood blinking into the darkness.  
  
"Mister Frodo? What are you doing out of b-"  
  
The figure started and gasped as its gaze shifted from the silvery shadow on the sill to the bed where he had left the husk of his old body still trapped beneath those foul-smelling elven cloths.   
  
"Master-!!!"  
  
He slipped through the window and clumsily scrambled at the decorative ledge feet below the sill. The winds wrapped around him, blurring the edges of his self, carrying on the back of the scent of woods the ash of that land to the east for which he now sought, drowning out the screams and sobs of the golden one above and the heart-pounding of other feet, other torches. His arm-veins told him to seek the grounds and rocks below, the place beyond the river wrapped in the darkness of forest. He slid and fell past floors and windows, walkways of stone gone uncaring in his gaze, the cries of many voices above ignored. He landed at last with a crash and a shudder that forced the last of old air from his body, and he hissed in triumph through black spittle.  
  
He crawled across the dark grass towards the shining silver ribbon that cut across his path, reflecting a thousand times over the bright moon-face in the sky, pregnant with light that could not penetrate his darkness. The greenery was slick with dew and spray, and, as if realizing what now trod upon them, the grasses reached to ensnare, to trap, to restrain. He tripped only once, swiping at the plants with his weak arm.  
  
They shrank away from the blood and flesh that fell from it. Poisoned.  
  
Finally, he met his goal, and collapsed upon the damp sands of the bank. Mind too jumbled to comprehend, he stared into a world increasingly blurring into gray, reflected, as he was, in the depths of the water.  
  
His mirror self gazed back at him with sunken, silver eyes from a gaunt face with a blue-black tinged mouth. His hair, so dark and curly in life, now hung lank and black and dull across his forehead, where the gray bone of his skull could be seen through his white skin. His body had lost all of its former softness and muscle, now a stick of a skeleton wrapped in flesh and the dirty remnants of his clothing. Through a gash in his torn traveling shirt he could see his wound, gangrenous now, spreading across his body like a parasite with thick, black veins that traveled down his arm, up his neck, and across his chest to curl tight death-fingers around his now-still heart. But through this all, his eyes only fastened on the single source of color in his new world, a golden band hung around his neck on a fine chain with letters that throbbed and burned in fire.  
  
The RING…  
  
Dark figures moved on the opposite shore, materializing from the blanket of fog that rolled across the river. Their presence pricked at his being and sent seizing cold through his veins. The ring glowed brighter.  
  
His lifeless eyes stared. There were nine, all mounted, their dark horses covered in ornate riding gear of silver and black leather. Their robes, black and flowing, had been necessary for him to see them before, but now he could see, without the aid of the ring, their pale, drawn faces, crowned in silver, clad in mail and armed with black swords. They stared back, eyes silver and lifeless, mirrors of his own.  
  
He made a move to stand, to see them better, when, coming from the distant window and a lifetime away, a voice called out, a single wailing note that struck him like an arrow.  
  
"…oh mister frodo don't die don't die please don't go where sam can't follow please no please…"  
  
He screamed his crow scream as he felt his dead heart constrict once. A force lifted him and dragged him backward, back towards life, and he pulled at the grass in vain with quickly vanishing fingers.  
  
The lead king raised one skeletal arm, a jagged ebony sword with a broken tip held in its grasp, and pointed it at the city of Rivendell. The frantic voices faded, and what was the wraith of a dead hobbit felt drawn to it no more.  
  
He stared at the kings… the Nazgul. And from his mouth came a language he had never heard, the language that Gandalf would not utter, the language of the One Ring.  
  
"Nine for mortal men doomed to die…"  
  
The lead king closed his eyes in acknowledgement, and as a collective they spoke.  
  
"One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne…"  
  
A shiver ran through him, from chest to toes, and his head rocked back, eyes rolling in sensation. He dimly saw the lead king urge the steed across the waters to stand before him. The king extended his sword, blade first, forming a bridge between the shore where the small figure stood and the depths of the water.  
  
The hobbit wraith, all that remained of Frodo Baggins, understood the invitation, understood the harsh language rushing through his body, understood that bright glowing of the Ring.   
  
Understood… and accepted.  
  
He grasped the blade with his right hand, cutting it deeply, and the blood that flowed went unnoticed to stain the river that had previously run clean and devoid of evil. He grasped, and the king pulled him upward to ride alongside him.  
  
Thus the Ringwraths became ten, the tenth and the smallest carried by the greatest of the former nine. The tenth… and the most terrible, for he carried the proof of their cruelty in his left arm and the sin of Middle Earth in a band of gold chained around his neck.  
  
And the band of dark riders rode eastward.   
  
Towards Mordor.  
  
  
-Fin 


End file.
